Anonymous Placement Makes Display Look More Like Search Partners

This is the subhead for the blog post

Search is competitive and ever-changing. That’s part of the allure. There’s an edge to be gained if you stay on top of latest trends and can act decisively against your competitor. Search data is highly transparent and the AdWords system responsive.

Display on the other hand, is not. It’s never been, really. From unpredictable smart pricing dynamics to fluctuating inventory availability, display has never been as agile as its search counterpart.

While the phenomenon of anonymous placement URLs isn’t new, it seems to be getting worse. Accounting for 10-20% of traffic in recently launched display campaigns, anonymous URLs are starting to make the display network look a lot more like search partners these days.

The only semi reliable documentation around the subject (outside of blogs and quotes from old help article in forum threads) is this. Reassuring to know I need a DoubleClick support resource to get any instructions on handling these URLs.

At the end of the day, performance should dictate how you handle placements. Luckily, these placements can still be excluded, but you potentially be shutting the door on good future placements? What if the New York Times suddenly decides to go anonymous (they have a love-hate relationship with AdWords advertisers as is) and you’ve excluded it outright? Should you only added detailed URLs vs. removing the entire anonymous domain outright?

There’s no real best practice here, and keeping advertisers in limbo is another step in a long series of changes that have taken away from SEMs’ ability to do their work effectively. It feels like I’m getting on my soap box every week nowadays, but how is this level of opaqueness even remotely acceptable? I wouldn’t run a traditional buy in a magazine or TV channel I didn’t know of, so why are websites any different?

I say strike. Block all anonymous placements, and let’s see how Google and AdSense publishers feel without the revenue.

About the author

Sean Marshall

Sean Marshall is the CEO of Intended, an SEM agency founded in 2013 to provide industry-best service for SMB clients. Before Intended, Sean was the VP of Business Development of PPC Associates (now 3Q Digital). He is a huge Cal fan and has been known to win a buck or two playing online poker.

One Response to Anonymous Placement Makes Display Look More Like Search Partners

I remember hearing about a third party service that matches anonymous urls with the actual site. maybe just a myth. in any case I agree; reminds me of when way too many actual search queries were listed at “other”.